


strong enough (to keep dreaming)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 19:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20711657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: The gorge they'll have to cross to reach the portal looks just as Will described it. It's the creature's presence there that's a surprise.





	strong enough (to keep dreaming)

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little look at how things might've gone differently if Hive had a consistent character <strike>instead of the Maveth plot existing solely for fs angst</strike>.
> 
> Title from Lindsey Stirling and Amy Lee's "love goes on and on."

Their laughter dies as they come around the last stand of stones and into sight of the gorge. The distance is a little shorter than Will described and Jemma might spare a moment to be relieved she’ll be back on solid ground that much faster if only her brain didn’t screech to a terrified halt at the sight of It standing on the other side.

There’s no wind, no sign of the storm that usually accompanies It. Across the gorge, it stands higher than they do and she feels dwarfed, a prey animal frozen in the presence of a predator. It no longer looks like a figure from a nightmare—at least not one of hers. Now it appears as an astronaut in a worn down suit, discolored by time and torn where wrinkles have grown too deep. Slowly the dusty helmet turns towards her, giving her a view of spiderweb splinters across the glass face and she _still __can’t move_.

A strong hand grips hers, tugging her sideways into a crevasse in the rocks. She lands against Will’s chest, can feel his heart beating as fast as hers, and suddenly she can breathe again.

But it’s only a moment before he’s peeling her off him and setting her aside so that he can step out again, his gun with its solitary bullet drawn and at the ready. She reaches for him. To pull him back maybe? Or just to feel the comfort of his warmth again? But she stops herself and waits for the tense line of his shoulders to loosen. He falls against the stones opposite her and though he speaks evenly, the heavy rise and fall of his chest belies his calm tone.

“I don’t think it’s coming over here. Yet. But it’s not moving either.”

Which leaves them with the problem of somehow getting over _there_ while still avoiding it.

“Why did it look like that?” Jemma asks. Will’s expression tells her the question is precisely as out of place as it sounds and even she must admit there are greater concerns here, but she tends to over-analyze when stressed. As it’s saved her life more than once, she’s loath to work on the shortcoming. Besides, there has to be a reason for Its choice of hallucination. “When I saw it in the No Fly Zone it appeared as, well, Death. Obviously to frighten me. What’s the point of appearing as an astronaut, a rather unkempt one at that?”

“It’s not appearing as anything,” Will says in that distant tone of his she’s spent months working to alleviate him of, “that’s just what it looks like.”

“What?” she asks, so softly the few inches of air between them eat up the sound. Luckily Will is looking to unburden himself—that or he simply knows her well enough to realize she’ll never let it go if he doesn’t elaborate.

“It took Taylor’s body.”

“_God_,” she breathes. She’s reminded of Frank Hall suddenly. Of that terrible last day of his life and how, afterward, Coulson was so gentle, taking her and Fitz aside to tell them how it had all happened. They’d heard enough of course to realize he had to be dead, but Coulson wanted to be sure they had the full story. He made no excuses and even took great pains to paint Frank in a positive light. It broke her heart—once for the teacher she loved and once for the commanding officer who cared more for her opinion of a, if she’s being completely honest, madman than he did for his own reputation.

She’s always been able to read between the lines of Will’s story. He’d described two of the deaths to her but not the third and it wasn’t hard to make the leap from the madness he described to the decision he would have been forced to make. His own life or that of his teammate. Did the creature take Taylor after or before? Would one be worse than the other? Regardless, both possibilities pale in comparison to the reality that It not only robbed Taylor of the dignity of his final resting place, but had the gall to make one of Will’s ghosts real.

Were it standing here now, she’d strike it for that. Not that it would do much good, but it would make her feel better.

“I should’ve known,” Will is saying, to himself more than her. “God, idiot. Okay, here’s what we’ll do: you go back about thirty feet down there’s a fork in the road. Take it up, use the grappling hook to get across then book it for the portal. When you get there, I’ll distract It-”

“Wait, what? No! I’m not _leaving_ you.” He really is an idiot if he thinks that.

He grips her shoulders. “It’s here to stop us. If I distract it, you’ll be able to make it-”

“No!” She shoves his hands off. “And it’s not-” The idea comes to her so suddenly, gripping her the way the long-sought answer to a scientific dilemma used to during late nights with Fitz. She pushes past Will, leans out to look-

-and is swiftly pulled back.

“_What the hell do you think you’re doing?_”

“You’re wrong,” she says reasonably, refusing to be riled up by his tone. His grip is hard enough to bruise and he shakes against her in what she knows to be fear more than fury. “It’s not here for us. If it were, it would have been watching for us, it would have acted when we arrived. But it’s standing there just how we found it, looking-” This second realization lands heavy in her gut, like seeing her own surgical tools floating in midair and knowing it could only be because she was infected. “It’s not waiting for _us_, it’s waiting for the portal to open. It wants to go to Earth.”

She feels sick. Her _team_ is on the other side of that portal. Will they be driven mad like Will’s team was? And what about the rest of the Earth? Brubaker’s notes on this planet’s ecosystem theorize that a dramatic climate event or even several in succession created the desert around them. Given Its propensity for making sandstorms, it’s not hard to imagine it might have been the cause.

“No,” Will says, shaking his head. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. If it wanted to go back, why would it attack us?”

She doesn’t know if he means the two of them or his team, but it hardly matters. “Its current desire doesn’t imply an ongoing one. It’s very possible it only decided to travel to Earth once it knew it was possible to track the portal. And it didn’t. Attack us, I mean. It chased me out of the No Fly Zone as soon as I’d uncovered the sextant and it’s hardly bothered us since.”

“Shit,” Will breathes. And then more emphatically he says several more curses, only most of which she knows.

She’d very much like to agree. It used her. Her intelligence and her desperation to return home. And isn’t that irony? She’s spent all these months working to get home and in a few minutes, if It succeeds, this world will be the safer one.

But no. She can’t let that happen. She _won’t_.

She remembers Coulson, sacrificing Frank to save the hundreds of thousands of people on Malta, and that day so many years before when she too swore to be the shield, to protect the Earth and her people no matter the cost.

“We have to stop it,” she hears herself say, though she has no idea where she’s found the strength. Her thoughts are all for duty but her heart is still dreaming of showers and cheeseburgers and _home_ and longs to let It do what it wants so long as she can reach the portal.

“I know.” Will’s tone is dark. Darker than she’s ever heard it. A shiver goes up her spine. “Stay here.”

“Wait.” She catches his arm. “What are you planning?”

“Same thing I’ve been planning for fourteen years,” he says with a wry grin completely at odds with his cold demeanor. He lifts the gun and she shakes her head.

“That won’t work. The helmet’s bulletproof.”

“I weakened it some last time and it’s had more than a decade to get worse. Besides, I only have to distract it. A shot to the torso-”

“It’s _inside_ Taylor’s body,” she reminds him. “What are the odds you’ll actually hit _It_?”

“I don’t know!” His shout echoes in the tight space and if there were any more room she might hurt herself falling back when he throws her off. “I don’t know, Jemma! But the portal’s about to open and I don’t know-” He goes still all at once, horror dawning on his face. It reminds her of those frantic moments when he tore open that cage of his, thinking she was truly poisoned. It’s less funny now.

She pulls back when he reaches for her face, but there’s no room and his hand is on her cheek—both his hands, the gun put away—and he’s so intense she has no trouble believing he’s been alone a third of his life.

“I’m _sorry_,” he says, his voice breaking on the word.

Before she can respond he’s let her go, twisting and bending oddly as he slides out of the crevasse and out of her sight. She breathes in, deep and quick, and follows. When she steps into the open she sees It first, then the tornado of sand that can only be the open portal, and finally Will. He has the launcher he built at his shoulder but the angle is wrong, it’s too high, and she knows when he pulls the trigger-

The hook catches in the shoulder of Taylor’s suit. It barely staggers under the impact. Then Will cranks the wheel, reeling the hook back in so that it wraps around the underside of the helmet, turning It into little more than a fish on a line and putting the portal out of reach.

It struggles, off-balance, gains its feet again, reaches out blindly to grab the line and _pulls_.

Jemma fears a moment Will might go tumbling into the gorge, but the portal’s already closed and he lets go as soon as It closes its hand around the line. What was once a telescope goes slamming into the opposite wall of the gorge with more force than a corpse should be capable of inflicting.

The visor on the helmet is down, leaving Taylor’s face out of view, but it’s just as well. Jemma can feel, like the swell of a wave, the building anger. Will grabs her again. He’s moving so fast she comes clear off her feet. The wave crashes down, alien rage permeating the air as fully as the wall of sand It sends up. Jemma’s back hits the wall of the crevasse again. Will stands over her, hands braced on either side of her head while the wind rushes past the narrow opening.

She barely notices the storm or Its anger. Will won’t meet her eyes and it’s no wonder why. It’s just robbed them of their one and only chance of going home.

~~~~~

The trek back to the caves is harder than the trek out to the gorge and not just because they hadn’t thought they’d be making it at all. The sandstorm has left the terrain soft and sucking, forcing them to lift their legs high with every step. Jemma’s dead on her feet by the time they arrive and collapses into her chair, not particularly caring what Will does with himself. Even the reality that she’ll never see home again is too much strain to think about and will just have to wait. Possibly forever.

But eventually she begins to realize that while she could fall asleep right here—she really needs to move to her cot before that happens—Will is still up and moving.

No sooner has she thought as much than he stops. Very nearby in fact.

She opens her eyes and finds him standing at the edge of their little common area, his traveling bag on his shoulder. It’s looking a lot more full than it was earlier.

“I’m gonna go,” he says.

That shocks the exhaustion right out of her. She sits up, nearly falling off the edge of her seat. “What? Where? Why?”

“Just further down,” he says, gesturing to the tunnel that connects their caves to the rest of the vast underground network. He’s not looking at her. He hasn’t, not since he held her face in his hands and apologized for frightening her. She thinks if he doesn’t look at her again soon, she might scream.

“But _why_?” she asks again.

“Because-” His face twists and his fist opens to fall against his thigh. “You’re not going home.”

It’s a good thing she’s sitting. She feels like he’s hit her.

She breathes deep, pushing down tears. She didn’t cry all the way back, she won’t cry now. She stands to face him. “So you’re leaving? You’re that mad?”

He stops mid-nod and finally looks at her, albeit incredulously. “Mad? Why would that-” He rubs his forehead. “I’m mad, yes. At _It_. I’m not-” He gestures, frustrated, to her. “I thought you’d want me to leave!”

“Why would I want you to leave?” she yells back.

“Because I cost you your chance at getting back to Earth. I thought _you’d_ be mad at _me_.”

“You-?” 

He is ridiculous sometimes, which wouldn’t be so bad at all if he were ridiculous like a clown, something funny to lighten her days. Oh no. Will Daniels is the infuriating sort of ridiculous. No wonder they sent him to another planet.

“I’m the one who should be leaving,” she says, proud that the tremor she feels in her heart doesn’t show through. “I’m the one It manipulated all these months. You should be locking me back in that cage before-”

“Hey, no.” His bag is on the ground and he’s holding her face the way he did earlier. “Maybe it did manipulate you—let you get the sextant and all—but it’s not inside your head.”

“You can’t know that.” It could force her to turn on him tomorrow. He’d never know until it was too late.

“I _do_ know. Jemma, look at me. I lost three men to that thing. I spent fourteen years alone in hell. Nobody knows crazy like I do. And that thing isn’t messing with you.”

She should fight him, insist he lock her away so she can’t hurt him more than she already has with her false hope, but he’s looking at her and she can’t seem to give that up so she lays her hand over one of his and says, “You saved the world today.”

He tries to pull away but she won’t let him. In lieu of that, he drops his eyes and she almost hates him for it. “No. I didn’t-”

“You _did_. Trust me. I’ve seen world saving before.”

When he looks at her again, his pained expression is worse than his averted gaze. “You missed your chance to go home.”

She shakes her head. It made sure that wasn’t a possibility. “So did you.”

“No, that’s not…”

“Not what?” She reaches out, catches his cheek to stop him pulling away again, and in that one movement knows she’s crossed a line she can’t uncross. His skin is warm and his beard is rough. She wonders why she hasn’t done this before.

“I never needed to go home.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she says, reaching for sharpness, for familiarity. Neither come. “You can’t tell me this place is just as good as Earth.”

“No. But I’ve got everything I need here.” His hand has moved, slow and careful like coaxing a deer out of hiding to rest at the back of her neck. The contact sends a familiar tingle up her spine and quickens her pulse.

She feels breathless but manages to ask, “Were you ever planning on sharing this secret to serenity with me?”

“Jemma.” He brushes her hair back from her face. She’s falling behind. She has the urge to catch up, to move her hand from his cheek into his hair like he has with her, but she can’t seem to move for fear she’ll frighten him off. “How can you be so smart and so blind? You changed everything. You gave me hope. You saved me. What more could I possibly ask for?”

Despite his words, there’s a longing in his voice that tells her there’s one more thing he wants and it isn’t to go home. With his surprisingly romantic declaration thrumming through her brain like the best love song she’s ever heard, she opts to surpass him rather than simply catch up. She surges up on her toes and pulls him down in a kiss fueled by all her heartbreak and frustration and, most of all, hope.

~~~~~

Will was right, she thinks hours later with his arm warm beneath her breasts and his chest steadily rising and falling at her back. If this world is all she’ll ever have, she couldn’t have asked for more than this.


End file.
